greentea1985:Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: John Roberts siding with the left wing of the court... MY GOD! THE MAYANS WERE RIGHT!

Roberts is a conservative but he tends to stick within the letter of the law of the Constitution, unlike Scalia and Thomas who like to legislate from the bench. Despite the pessimism, when I heard 19/20 constitutional scholars thought Obamacare is constitutional, I had a feeling it would survive.

Well, in the long run it's the best possible outcome if the law was going to be upheld. By changing the mandate penalty to a tax and, ruling out the commerce clause justification, the bill is upheld without issuing a blanket authorization for the federal government to force the purchase of goods and services.

Weird, Obama stated over and over this is not a tax. Now he argues it is.

At least they shot down the forced Medicaid expansion. That will throw a big wrench into his plans. 26 states can tell Obama and the Feds to suck it now, and they will.

Still scary. Means Congress can regulate your behavior via taxes. Vote Republican? Obama can impose a tax on you. Buy an American car? Obama can impose a tax on you. Christian? Obama can impose a tax on you.

Now liberals, if we get a Republican advantage, how about we implement a tax on the unemployed? No job? Fine, pay a tax. I know you think you just won, but you just screwed everyone equally with another erosion of individual rights.

1022: The insta-reaction begins: Matt Kibbe, head of anti-tax conservative Tea Party group Freedom Works, writes this in a fundraising appeal to supporters: "In a shocking and disappointing verdict, the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare and its individual mandate as a tax, ushering in an unprecedented expansion of government power and handing a huge victory in Obama's Progressive plan to 'fundamentally transform America.'"

It's almost like these shills already have these talking points written out on a card.

wxboy:So how exactly does this work? I've always thought the best way to encourage the purchase of health insurance was to either provide a large tax deduction or just allow the cost of insurance to be subtracted from the final income tax amount.

Is that essentially what will happen, or is it something else?

I admit I haven't been paying close attention to this case (or ACA for that matter).

The ruling seems to be more or less the former option: whatever they called it, it's a tax on not having insurance, so the net is the same as getting a deduction for having insurance.

Andromeda:I'm amazed it was Roberts. That's just something I was not expecting.

So goddamn it I guess we now have to care about our fellow man like Jesus said?!

Woah, let's not get carried away, alright?

GAT_00:I bet. I can't believe Roberts swung on it either. Did it go 6-3? Seems unlikely that if Roberts went for it that Kennedy didn't as well.

Justice Kennedy, I am disappoint...

From the Live Blog:In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

RolandGunner:Well, in the long run it's the best possible outcome if the law was going to be upheld. By changing the mandate penalty to a tax and, ruling out the commerce clause justification, the bill is upheld without issuing a blanket authorization for the federal government to force the purchase of goods and services.

But it just did. If Obama wants you to do something, you do it, or the feds tax you. That is force. Just wait until Pubs in the states start pushing something you don't like and enforce it with a tax..... Will you like it then?

You must mean suck it everyone, now we'll never fix health care. We'll just keep patching scabby band-aids onto the issue, just like this bill.

At least someone bothered with the band-aid when the wound has been festering open for nearly a century.

This. A baby step forward is still a step forward. And as conservative Boomers die off, we might actually get to make more of those steps, until America catches up with the rest of the civilized world.